MEALS
MIDWEST
THIS 12-STATE REGION IS RICH
IN CULINARY TRADITIONS.
BY SUZANNE HALL
F
rom the eastern tip of Ohio to the western edge of North
Dakota, the Midwest is a land of lakes and streams teeming
with walleye and pike, grazing grounds for beef and bison, and
farms raising pigs, poultry, vegetables and stone fruit. It’s the
home of the Corn Belt (and the wheat belt), and often called
America’s breadbasket. Wisconsin is the largest producer of cheese
in the country. Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota
and Wisconsin are among 10 cattle-ranching states in the U.S.
Nearly 68 million people reside in the 12-state Midwest
region. Many are of German, Scandinavian or Eastern European
heritage. They brought their traditions, especially their culinary
ones, with them when they arrived. While the Midwest is home
to restaurants featuring dishes from around the world, those
original cooking and eating traditions continue to be a part of
what is known as Midwest cuisine.
The varied menu at HoDo in the Hotel Donaldson, Fargo,
North Dakota, includes knoephla, a German potato soup. The
Scandinavian bread lefse is used for wraps. And lingonberry
pie is a popular item at various dining spots in Wisconsin. At
Polonia in Hamtramck, Michigan, czarcie jadlo—pork and lamb
with potato noodles—is on the mostly Polish menu.
Home cooking
PHOTO CREDIT Galdones Photography
The Midwest has long been known as a meat-and-potatoes
region. It still is, but it’s changing, according to chefs such as
Colby Garrelts. “A sharing culture and society, coupled with the
advent of the information age, have made people more willing to
step out of their comfort zone,” he says. In the Midwest, though,
“people still love their meat and potatoes, fried chicken and
pies—foods that are earthy and represent solid home cooking.”
Garrelts and his wife chef Megan Garrelts, who focuses on
baking and pastry, own two restaurants in Kansas. Bluestem in
Kansas City highlights Colby Garrelts’ progressive American
cuisine and Megan Garrelts’ contemporary American desserts.
Rye, their more-casual restaurant in Leawood, celebrates the
Midwestern cuisine they both grew up with. There, they give
traditional dishes a chef’s point of view while preserving the
important heritage of the dish.
The breakfast menu at Rye includes burnt-ends hash with
spicy tomato sauce, red bell peppers, potatoes, onions and sunnyside-up eggs. Burnt ends, a Kansas tradition, are the tips of beef
or pork brisket cut from the flat side of a smoked roast. They also
appear on the menu as an appetizer served with sourdough toast,
pickled celery and barbecue sauce. At lunch, there’s an openfaced burnt-ends sandwich. Other Midwest traditions on the
lunch menu are fried chicken with mashed potatoes, ham gravy
and greens, and a pulled smoked-pork sandwich with coleslaw,
fries, pickles and barbecue sauce. The chicken is a signature item
at Rye, as are Megan Garrelts’ pies, including mokan pie made
with Kansas pecans and Missouri black walnuts.
Socializing at the supper club
Tami Lax is a chef who now focuses on menu planning and
management at The Old Fashioned, the Madison, Wisconsin,
restaurant she owns. She agrees that the Midwest has a meat-andpotatoes tradition, but, she says, “Our food culture has stepped up
in the last 15 years.”
“Where Wisconsin is king” is the motto of The Old Fashioned,
which is inspired by Wisconsin taverns and supper clubs—restaurants
only open at night where whole families gather to socialize. The Old
Fashioned’s menu follows the supper-club tradition of offering nightly
specials. Friday night’s fish fry has a choice of beer-battered walleye
or cod or flour-dusted perch. All are served with poppy seed coleslaw,
matchstick fries, lemon/caper tartar sauce and rye bread.
OPPOSITE: Found Kitchen’s lamb meatballs.
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REGIONAL CUISINE meals from the midwest
STATE FAVORITES
Here is a sampling of
distinctive dishes in the
12 states of the Midwest:
INDIANA: sugar cream pie;
persimmon pudding;
a combo of chicken and waffles
IOWA: sweet corn; melons from
the town of Muscatine; pork
tenderloin; Dutch letters (a cookie)
KANSAS: barbecue; bierocks,
pastry pockets of hamburger and
cabbage; sour cream/raisin pie
MICHIGAN: Vernor’s, a ginger
ale that dates back to 1862;
walleye fish and chips; square
pizza; morels
MINNESOTA: lefse, a Norwegian
flatbread; a hot dish filled with
meat, potatoes and vegetables,
called “casserole” elsewhere
MISSOURI: pizza with thin crust
and provel cheese; toasted
ravioli; Kansas City barbecue
NEBRASKA: frenchies, deepfried grilled cheese sandwiches;
Rocky Mountain oysters
(mammal testicles); raisin pies
NORTH DAKOTA: knoephla, a
German potato soup; cheese
buttons, noodle dough stuffed
with seasoned dry cottage cheese
OHIO: kielbasa; sauerkraut;
Cincinnati chili; goetta, a
German breakfast sausage
SOUTH DAKOTA: chislic, small
cubes of beef, venison or lamb
deep-fried until still pink inside
and seasoned with flavored salt
WISCONSIN: cheese; beer cheese
soup; cheese curds
Walleye appears on the menu at restaurants in many Midwestern states. Walleye hash with
scallions, potatoes, peppers and poached eggs topped with hollandaise is on the menu at the
downtown Minneapolis location of FireLake Grill House & Cocktail Bar, where Jim Kyndberg is
executive chef. At lunch, he offers an heirloom corn-crusted walleye with wood-roasted vegetables
and piquillo pepper sauce, and a Minnesota walleye burger with homestead slaw and lemon/
tarragon rémoulade. The corn-crusted walleye is also on the dinner menu.
The Scandinavian influence crops up on menus throughout the Midwest. Lena’s Meatballs,
a Swedish-inspired dish on the FireLake menu, are a combination of pork, duck and beef, and
come with porcini mushroom sauce, potato puree, lingonberry compote and zucchini pickles. The
Sunday night special at The Old Fashioned is a Scandinavian chicken dinner. A half-chicken on the
bone is rubbed with cinnamon, juniper and cardamom. It’s then grilled over a live fire and served
with sausage/currant dressing, smashed red bliss potatoes, and buttered parsnips and carrots.
New Midwestern
Root vegetables such as parsnips and carrots are found on menus in many Midwestern states,
especially those with especially short growing seasons. Kyndberg has a beet salad on the menu. He
offers roasted root vegetables as a side and with his rotisserie chicken.
Beet salad with hazelnuts, grapefruit, goat cheese and watercress is on the menu at Chicago’s
GreenRiver, where Aaron Lirette is executive chef. He also serves baby carrots and turnips with his
roasted chicken. Nicole Pederson, a Minneapolis native, is executive chef at Found Kitchen and Social
House in Evanston, Illinois. Her root vegetables are served with charred leek soubise and pomegranate.
ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: 1) At Rye, wood-fired grilled Lake Superior walleye with fingerling potato, asparagus,
spring peas, leeks and smoked ham brodo. 2) Bison bone marrow at FireLake. 3) & 4) Ocean trout with beets, horseradish and
kohlrabi, right, and Slagel Family Farm beef with maitake mushroom, cipollini onion, potato puree and bone marrow jus on the
menu at GreenRiver.
2 0 THE NATIONAL CULINARY REVIEW • APRIL 2017
PHOTO CREDITS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: 1) Bonjwing Lee 2) FireLake Grill House & Cocktail Bar Minneapolis Downtown 3) Kailley Lindman 4) Galdones Photography
ILLINOIS: Chicago-style
deep-dish pizza; Italian beef
sandwiches; ranch dressing;
horseshoes, sandwiches made
from toasted white bread
topped with a hamburger patty,
french fries and cheese sauce
Found and GreenRiver fall into the category of “new
Midwestern” cuisine. Pederson’s menu leans heavily on vegetables.
Lirette serves not only Midwestern-style dishes, but international
ones, as well. Italian beef sandwiches, a Chicago staple, are on
the lunch menu. To acknowledge Chicagoans love of beef, the
menu includes a 36-ounce Slagel Family Farm steak. Obviously
meant to be shared, it comes with maitake mushrooms, cipollini
onions, potato puree and bone marrow jus.
Midwest favorites
Beef is a favorite in Kansas and Wisconsin, as well. At Rye,
the reserve wood-fired steak program includes filet mignon and
Kansas City strip, and rib-eye and T-bone steaks. Prime rib is on
the menu on Sundays.
The Old Fashioned offers prime rib, a supper-club tradition,
as the special on Saturday night. It is served with a wedge salad
topped with French dressing and Wisconsin blue cheese. That
blue cheese is among the many cheeses on Lax’s menu. In all,
the kitchen usually stocks about 16 that rotate on the restaurant’s
cheese platter. Wisconsin beer cheese soup garnished with popcorn
is on the menu every day. So are cheese curds that are lightly
battered and fried. “We buy about 3,000 pounds a week,” Lax says.
To make dirty fries, Kyndberg tops natural-cut fries with
barbecued brisket, cheese curds and gravy. Cheese curds,
fresh tomatoes and roasted garlic are toppings on his grilled
flatbread pizza.
Bratwurst and other sausages, another Wisconsin tradition,
appear on menus across the state at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If sausage is a Wisconsin staple, wild rice holds the same
place in Minnesota, one of the two major producers of wild rice
in the U.S. (the other is California). The FireLake menu offers
wild rice soup with leeks, sherry, shiitake mushrooms and
rotisserie chicken. It is the key ingredient in the restaurant’s wild
rice veggie burger with black beans, avocado, lettuce, tomato,
red onion and sweet potato hummus, and there are wild rice
pancakes served with chokeberry sauce. The hardwood-grilled
salmon is served over a bed of wild rice pilaf with leeks, freekeh
and lingonberry sauce.
Midwestern cuisine is rich and varied. “It is rooted in our rural
communities,” Garrelts says. “This region is a melting pot of ethnic
influences and those from other parts of the country. It is rooted in
the stockyards, our barbecues and, of course, grandma’s table.”
SUZANNE HALL HAS BEEN WRITING ABOUT CHEFS, RESTAURANTS, FOOD AND WINE FROM HER
HOME IN SODDY-DAISY, TENNESSEE, FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS.
2016 Grand Prize Winner
Mole Duck Taco with
Puffed Rice, Avocado
Cilantro Puree,
Pineapple Radish
Salsa & Cotija
by Chef Eljesa Haxhiu
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